Sunday, 25 December 2016

As i promised to Miguel Simón, i just made a new version of the Epoch Electrotennis and since the Entex is a clone of this console, i've combined both previous simulators into one. The intro boot screen for both previous sims are now gone so when you start a game, it is in "pause" mode so this gives time to players to be ready before starting a game.

The new sim also boots-up in full screen mode and a new addition is that you can now choose the resolution you want but still depending on the TV or Video Card which resolution it can displays. Please do read the text file which is inside the RAR file.

You can donwload this new version (0.10.1) in the "Simulators" section of the right-side of this blog. Hope you'll like it! =)

Sunday, 18 December 2016

Audio/Video (A/V) modding vintage game console can be easy to hard depending on how the video signal is processed, and for audio, it's usually very easy.

Today is how to make an A/V output from a Magnavox Odyssey 400 (and this also can be done on any Odyssey 100, 200 and 500) as this (and the others Odyssey) is very easy to mod as you don't need any electronic components, just a simple A/V cable (and a soldering iron, etc..).

First, you need to open up the console by turning the only screw in the back and after the back panel removed, you should see this:

After that, remove the cardboard so it's easier to solder the wires.

Ok, now find the inscription: "COMP. VIDEO" (it's near the RF section and channel select switch)

Once you found the "COMP. VIDEO" trace (see yellow line), you can solder a video cable on any of the solder on the (yellow) line and solder the ground cable on the RF shield. (i myself solder the video cable on the last solder point and soldered the ground next to the last solder point - see next 3 pictures). Oh and don't forget to cut the RF cable!

And now for the Audio part, find the PIEZO speaker (upper left - up to the SOUND ON/OFF Switch) and solder the audio cable where the "engraved A (note that it's not there originally)" and the ground beside it - see next 3 pictures):

By soldering to this specific solder point, you can either use the audio out or both audio out and piezo speaker. I put the sound switch to OFF and by doing this, the piezo doesn't "chirp" and the audio out makes a "thund" sound. Now it's up to you if you only want to hear a "thund" sound only or "thund & chirp" sounds (OR...only chirp sound if you unplug the audio out cable).

Now before closing everything up, test your mod and you should get a clean picture (on the TV) like this:

Voila! So now your Odyssey 400 (or 100, 200 or 500) is ready to be played on any recent TV's!

PLEASE NOTE: I'm not responsible to any damage that you may inflict or cause on any game console you (or someone else) by trying to modify, use these information at your own risk.

Tuesday, 13 December 2016

Yep, the VIS is finally emulated in MAME 0.180 and the driver was made by "Carl". OK it's not 100% emulated but at last it's already has a good start as i tried 2-3 ISOs with it and they all worked, even my hack called "VISguard" works nicelly.

And here's a screenshot of the VIS booting screen:

Cool to see this game system finally emulated after some years! Two thumbs up for Carl and everybody who works on all these drivers for MAME! =)

And just in time too as i sold my Tandy VIS to a fellow Canadian collector 2 weeks ago. Oh and i will upload the "VISguard" hack soon if anyone wants to try it out.

In English: "You are in the list of systems that will be added to MESS:http://www.mess.org/dumping/games_needed#coleco_telstar_arcadeAnd
about the scans I needed them the same way the Epoch Cassette Vision
scans in a good quality to use in frontends for emulators."

"And the developer talks about this in this forumhttp://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=33828"

"That list is now 9 years old! The MESS team still has not been able to dump the Coleco Telstar Arcade cartridge and it will be another couple of years before they do. So you have to wait until they do so no need for the scans/pictures for now." =)

In English: "I needed scans
of boxes, photos of boxes in 3d, and photos of cartridges and console
(without cartridges) in the same plane so that it is possible to make an
animation of the cartridges being inserted into the console."

"I can take pictures of my Coleco Telstar Arcade but it is in storage so i can't make pictures for quite a time, and i can not make pictures in 3D as i only have a Samsung S4 phone for taking pictures. I will put this on my "to do list" for the near future."

"You mean James Jacobs of Amigan Software (http://amigan.1emu.net/) ? If so then no problem as i love his work for the Interton VC 4000, Elektor TV Games Computer and both GI games: AY-3-8550 and AY-3-8600. My E-Mail address is "slydc@yahoo.ca" if he wants (or any of you) to contact me. He did contacted me some years ago for the Magnavox Odyssey 5000 (by the Atari Age forum), so if he wants to add the AY-3-8700/8710 then i will be glad to help him out."

This is the most elusive (or Ultra Rare) PC-50x-type cartridge there is for any SD-050/070/090 Pong-Cartridge game systems. In fact, it is so rare that there is only 1 picture of the cartridge in 20 years of surfing the web (yep, started surfing in 1996) and the web site "Pong-Picture-Page" has this picture:

It's the one in the right-up corner: "PC-508 - Fundamental"

In 20 years, i have never seen one except in this photo, so is it rare ? Let me say it is ALMOST as rare as to find a real POLYBIUS arcade....HA! (hope you all know that Polybius is an urban legend). But even if it's the rarest game cartridge for SD-050 (and clones) Pong systems, it was also released for two other Pong systems: The Poppy 9015 and the Unimex Mark IX (both in the 9015-family).

For the Poppy 9015, is is called: "Schiess-und Sportwettkampf" (model 9015H) which translate to in Engligh "Shooting and Sports Competition" and for the Unimex Mark IX, it is called: "Schiess-Ball Spiele" (model Nr.907) and in English "Shooting-Ball Games".

Here's some pictures from Pong-Picture-Page (hope Adrian won't mind):

And here's a picture with the label in English (from an Ebay seller):

So...if you check out those two cartridge labels, this game cartridge has six games: Tennis, Hockey, Handball, Squash, Target 1 and Target 2 and those two carts comes with a light gun....HUMMM.

I thought for a couple of years that the PC-508 had an AY-3-8550 and it has the same games as the AY-3-8500 but you can move the paddles vertically and horizontaly as any Pong systems (SD-050 and clones) have joysticks, and would have been logical as the AY-3-8550 is also a rare game chip to find.

But after researching for any 1st and 2nd generation games for 20 years, i finally found my answer to which game chips are inside those PC-508, so before i reveal the answer, here's some pictures of different Pong systems:

So if you check any of those boxes especially in the right-down corner, you should see this:

Those are fuzzy pictures as i tried to manify them but you can eventually see something: the paddles are only showing vertical mouvement! So here's a better picture (taken from the GI 1978 catalog):

Same screenshot! So here you have it folks, the PC-508 Fundamental cartridge has really a AY-3-8500 game chip! Talk about weird! The rarest cartridge but with the most commun game chip!! Go figure! We can assume that General Instrument back them wanted to liquidate their AY-3-8500 stock so they released this last cartridge but it's so $&?$ rare to find!

Anyway, just get a PC-501 cart (aka Supersports) and mofify the board so that you can use a AY-3-8500 instead of a AY-3-8610 and you got yourself a homebrew PC-508...like yeah...who's in his right mind will do this! LOL!!!

Thursday, 10 November 2016

This is another quite rare game system as it is a HYBRID game system (a 2-in-1) which can play Colecovision and Sega SG-1000 game cartridges. But not all Colecovision carts can be played on this system as it's missing components to be able to play games for the Super Action Controllers, Rollerball and Drivig controller and some 2 players games.

But on the Sega SG-1000 part, it can play all the cartridges except the ones made for the SC-3000 even if this game system has the SG-1000 expansion port. I won't go to much details for this hybrid game system as it's already emulated in MESS (now MAME).

So enough chit-chat and onward to the pictures!

OUPS!! Don't know why these pictures are upside-down as they display properly on my computer...very strange. OK, i know the A/V output really sucks as i've made this about 14 years ago to see if i could get a decent composite video output. Well at least it did and even without an OP amp!

The BIOS with the buit-in game "Meteoric Shower".

Text hacked in French! (heh!)

LOVE this game!!

If you read: "Designed by Sylvain De Chantal", that's not a hack as it's was me who designed this game for Digital Press (yup, that's my real name BTW). I just designed the sprites, levels, etc...as i'm NO programmer. That job was made by my good friend Daniel Bienvenu (one of the Guru coder for the Colecovision, if not the best!). It was a blast and hell to have made this game. ;P

Now the SG-1000 part:

Again, hack the text in French just for fun!

And here's the cherry on the sunday (metaphor here), the scans of the manual: